Kid Icarus

Mahrez

He honestly sounds like a benefits thief. Deliberately being shit so he can pick up his sacking on fee

Danjuma's a good shout actually! I know what you mean, I go through phases of watching very little football so my knowledge, especially of teams abroad is really limited.

Yeah, first half of the season whenever I saw them he looked good. 2nd half every time I've seen them he's looked very meh, but not sure if I've just missed his good games.

I'm not always the best at spotting potential, but I'm not getting the Gallagher hype tbh.

Ship of aliens?

Leeds win for me

Anah but the pronunciations are really similar. Ee-zay Ol-ee-say My brain just combined them and decided they're a good player.

All depends on how independent it truly is and how long it stays that way before being corrupted.

I've just realised I've been thinking of Ese and Olise as one combined player for almost a full season

Some great posts, really enjoyed reading them all and getting your insight. Just looking forward, can you think of any players out there that stick out for you as Howe type players? As in the type of player he often signed for Bournemouth, but maybe that next step up again? E.g. I think before his success at West Ham, Jared Bowen would have been a very Eddie Howe type of player. Hope that makes sense.

That Tyneside Life YouTube channel did a video ages ago about possible training ground sites and picked that one out. Could be someone using that info to talk shite, putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5, or there being something to it.

I remember once seeing a radgie go up a curb non-handed on a bike. Never seen anything anything like it before or since, it was incredible.

I'm not sure why the filters you're applying need to be that specific in order to be valid? Having said that, Zaha and Shaw especially definitely did hit the heights of before their dip in form and easily surpassed it. Zaha went from potential future star at Palace, to perceived flop at Man United, to realising his potential without going to a huge club back at Palace. Shaw went from a great left back at Southampton, to out of favour, labelled overweight, and in then in poor form at Man United, to regaining his form at Man United and then with England to the extent that he was imo the best player at Euro 2021.

Is JWP actually any good outside of his set pieces and crosses?

He's done an absolutely incredible job. I couldn't be happier with the job that he's done, the way that he's done it, the style of football we've played, and the plans that he has. Absolutely delighted that he's our manager and would love nothing more than for him to grow with the club and be the main driving force of our success. My only minor concern is that similar to Southgate, he ends up being a victim of his own success next season if we don't push on to the extent people might start to expect after this phenominal run of form. I've already told myself that I'll be happy with mid-table and I'm going to stick with that. If we have a season of letting players bed in and then pushing on again, so be it, I've already seen more than enough to know that Howe has got what it takes as a manager.

Rashford for me stands out as the one I think would be absolute dynamite under Howe.

That's GNR behind him, so the one all the dog walkers go on with the little coffee van at the end of Gosforth

Imagine you set up a YouTube channel. You do it earnestly and start gainining popularity, then people start more or less bullying you, but weirdly the more they bully you and get pissed off with you, the more popular you become. You're now in a position where you can lean into the cringe and gain even more popularity while pissing off the people who hate you and have been bullying you in the process. That's basically what's happened, I think whatever opinion we might have on him playing up to it, it was inevitable given the incentive was there.

Aye, I think most 'communities' (ugh) end up like that kept unchecked, even the seemingly innocuous ones. There's a YouTube channel on it called People Ruin Everything, that looks at how each fanbase will basically keep one upping itself until it's weird, inaccessible and ruined.

Yeah definitely. The way I think of it is that when say a Sunderland fan is sound until it gets onto the subject of Sunderland or Newcastle, it's because they themselves are working with this idea of a stereotype in their minds who they're now arguing with. Look at how Neil was getting spoken to on here yesterday, with all these weirdos going on like he was someone else they have in their head. It's proper infantile That's the good thing about RTG I think, even though I don't think the people on there are like all Sunderland fans at all, it really is almost a monolith on its own where so many of them massively live up to the really funny stereotype of Sunderland fans. Looking on there now though you can see that a few of them are heading towards mental breakdowns, they're just absolutely consumed with loathing.

Luke Edwards is supposed to be a professional journalist working for a reputable media outfit, so no. Not least because he's petty as fuck and can't stand any criticism against him. Whereas this Adam P is just some lad doing YouTube videos, who probably realised at some point that his numbers were going up when people started mocking him. Don't get me wrong like, I think he's shit and embarrassing, but the people who seemingly hate him and can't stop talking about him and retweeting him are taking themselves for mugs if their intention is for him to fade away.

I think that's more a description of the problem with tribalism than something unique to them. We have plenty that are like that. Every set of supporters will have something unique about them because nothing grows in a vaccuum, but the way each trait is used as a way to think of every fan group as a monolith is something we should have thought beyond years ago tbh. Love the rivalry and stuff, but when people hold onto the bitterness and anger long term and start being totally consumed by it, it stops being funny for me.

Personally find it funnier to laugh at the people he winds up than I do to get embarrassed for him like. Mad how much the people who seemingly can't stand him are just making him more and more popular.

There are tons: Andy Cole, Zaha, Huth, Luke Shaw, Lingard when he went to West Ham, Sigurdsson, Modric. Basically any player who took time to settle and ended up being class, or a player who got a move that didn't work out, then moved away and regained form. There are loads that didn't get the renaissance at the other side and just faded away as well - Dempsey, Drinkwater, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Scott Sinclair, Jeffers.